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The images from last Saturday tell a story that France’s political class would rather not read. City halls in flames in Limoges; anarchist graffiti scrawled across the mayor’s office in Marseille. Luxury boutiques looted, banks smashed, police vans battered with clubs and bricks. Half a million people took to the streets, and while the vast majority marched peacefully, a violent fringe turned the day into one of the worst eruptions of disorder France has seen in decades.
Prime Minister SĂ©bastien Lecornu called it the work of the “ultra-left” and criminals, and President Macron promised to prosecute and punish “the sowers of chaos”.
On the same Saturday, Brussels saw young people clash with police over education costs. Lisbon filled with thousands protesting a housing market where prices have doubled since 2017. Milan’s cathedral square was cleared with tear gas; Bologna’s police used water cannons. In Albania, students demanded the prime minister’s resignation. The common thread runs from the Mediterranean to the North Sea: a generation and a working class that have concluded the institutions of liberal democracy are not delivering.
France’s government points to the scale of the violence – with more than 150 officers injured – as proof that its response is justified, resulting in 1,200 arrests. A teenager lost his hand after picking up a stun grenade; the police watchdog is investigating at least two dozen allegations of excessive force. The UNSA police union warned that officers are being treated as “punching bags” and that “the rope is stretched to its maximum”. When both the protesters and the police feel abandoned by the state, the state has a credibility problem, not a security problem.
The timing is toxic. Macron, in the final stretch of his presidency, is facing a fragmented political landscape and economic mess. The Yellow Vests, whose numbers Saturday’s protests surpassed, were a warning shot. The presidential election is months away, and the prime minister has already accused the demonstrators of using violence as a “warm-up”.
There is a temptation in European capitals to treat this as a policing problem: more arrests, tougher tactics, a firmer line. The rage on display is not an argument against French democracy; it is an argument that the prosperity of the past be made available in the present.
Into this vacuum steps a right-wing political class with a narrative already prepared. Across Europe, leaders of populist parties have spent the past two years constructing a framework that requires no specific riot to activate it; it is produced continuously in everyday politics, waiting for events to confirm it.
In France, Marine Le Pen, the founder of National Rally, has regularly talked about Islamic communitarianism, insisting that secularism is “non-negotiable”. Her party President Jordan Bardella, during a speech in Israel, condemned antisemitism and anti-Zionism. He also emphasised the key messages of his party: combating Islamism and restricting immigration to France. He stated that “Since Oct. 7 in particular, in France and in Europe, we have been witnessing the deadly honeymoon between Islamism and the extreme left. One provides the fanatics, the other institutionalizes evil, provides the excuse of victimization and the appearance of a good conscience.”
In Germany, Alice Weidel of the AfD has claimed that Jews in her country are “exposed to Muslim criminality”, citing Palestinian demonstrations in Berlin and asserting that “Jews can no longer walk on the streets”; forget about Gaza genocide.
In Britain, Nigel Farage described a Muslim demonstration in Tower Hamlets as “like a foreign invading army marching through our streets”, warning that “the deluded left” has been “in league with very strange bedfellows”. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’s PVV manifesto opens: “This is your country! The Netherlands is full, overflowing, packed to the brim.”
The Budapest conservative conference held in June 2025 and chaired by ex-PM Victor Orbán, brought together controversial figures including Dutch politician Geert Wilders, Slovak PM Robert Fico and German AfD leader Alice Weidel. Orbán declared: “What is happening in Europe is not migration, but an organized population replacement aimed at changing the cultural foundation of Europe.”
The narrative logic is consistent across all five countries. First, frame “Islamism and the left” as an alliance, Bardella’s “honeymoon”, Farage’s “strange bedfellows”. Second, Orban’s linking immigration to “population replacement” and electoral engineering, Wilders stating that the Netherlands is “packed to the brim”. Third, use “no-go zones” and “streets where Jews cannot walk” as concrete evidence that the state has lost control. Fourth, present oneself as the only protector, Bardella claims the National Rally is “the best shield for French Jews”; Wilders presents himself as the only one daring to “say it as it is”.
This framework does not require the French riots as a trigger. But once such events occur, it can be activated instantly: the violence becomes evidence of “Islamist totalitarianism” and “left connivance”, legitimising the far-right’s agenda without any need for evidence.
What this narrative omits is the diagnosis. The protesters in Paris were not marching for Islamism or against secularism; they were demanding teachers, facilities and affordable fuel. The unrest in Brussels was about education costs; in Lisbon, housing; in Milan, the cost of living. These are class grievances, not civilisational ones.
Earlier, Eric Kaufmann’s book, Whiteshift , often invoked in these debates, actually argues the opposite of what the right’s narrative implies. Kaufmann contends that Western societies can avoid conflict by allowing whites to adapt to demographic change through assimilation and the broadening of racial boundaries. His preferred pathway is “join”, not “fight”. He calls for a “multi-vocal nationalism” that legitimises both ethnic identities and cosmopolitan visions.
The right’s narrative has a hole at its centre; it can describe the fire, but it cannot explain the drought; it can name the arsonists, but it cannot address the conditions that made the ground dry. Until someone in power does, Europe should expect more Saturdays like this one and the right should expect its narrative to keep working, because it never has to solve anything.
